


Worlds Apart

by skripturyent



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Clexa, Clexa!gangau, Eventual Smut, F/F, The 100 - Freeform, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 02:31:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7666891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skripturyent/pseuds/skripturyent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[ NB: Worlds apart is still a working title, and on that note, this fic is still being worked on, too. ] </p><p>It's not just black and white, it's grey too. <br/>(Doctor!Clarke, Gang-leader!Lexa)</p><p>tw: dark-themes, triggering content likely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worlds Apart

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing a clexa fic. Second time writing a long-multichaptered thing. Thanks for giving it a go and constructive criticism is very much appreciated. x

Tonight is a rather quiet night at the hospital, Clarke and her mother are sharing the shift while the other lesser experienced staff took an eventide’s respite for the past week’s gruelling ones. As the crisp bleach-white doors sweeps open, Clarke’s eyes settle atop the figure on that slab of metal-on-wheels.

And, before she even really thinks anything, she **_feels._** It’s a subtle sense of familiarity, something like the warm embrace of a long-awaited lover, the delicate kisses of nostalgia sinks deep into her veins. She feels it circulate through her, the most brightest shades of golden gentility, of tan and amber that caresses her into ---

But it passes in that one brief instant; the experience is so quick she’s not sure she even felt it. However, what truly registers in Clarke’s brain… is that she (this brunette goddess) looks like grinning melancholy incarnate. She looks like a paradox of happiness and the dead-weight of purgatory. This woman has the most desolate heavy green eyes and, _god_ , like she’s got the whole world’s burden upon those inked, narrow shoulders. Though her mind runs at a thousand miles an hour, Clarke sits quietly as Abby, her mother, goes about her professional duties – this patient is hers as she had dealt with the previous one.

“What’s your name?”

A pause, then…

“Lexa.”

“Okay,” Abby, her mother says with a curt nod, “I’m Abby, this is my daughter, Clarke. She’s also a doctor here.” Abby gestures toward Clarke in some kind of introduction. Lexa’s sharp gaze swivels and settles on Clarke, and even though she’s wearing her professional white coat, she feels aberrantly in the nude. Abby, however, seems utterly ignorant (or accustomed) to the stand-offish behaviour. “I’ll be your doctor for today.”

The stethoscope is removed from Abby’s neck and as she tries to lift Lexa’s dark cotton shirt from her abdomen, the dark-haired girl jerks away violently, her expression revealing itself to be one of a seething vehemence. “Lexa… I need to check your pulse first.”

“Lexa? _Please?_ ”

Begrudgingly Lexa allows Abby to peel away the material, and presses the cool disc to her chest, flinching ever so slightly. Clarke tries to maintain a professional standpoint, nonetheless she can’t help but to admire the tanned expanse of Lexa’s toned stomach. Across the smooth silky skin were the slopes and inclines of one who spends a good proportion of her life running amongst the wolves.

Whilst her mother listens to Lexa’s heartbeat, Clarke’s eyes wander towards Lexa’s gaping semi-clotted bullet wound that’s scarcely absconded the left of her chest – probably just missed a vital organ, too.

“Looks like you narrowly just escaped death, Lexa.”

Lexa doesn’t say anything as Abby retrieves a tray of her surgical tools, examining each of them for aptness toward said situation. Eventually she determines that a thin pair of forceps is ideal for extracting the shards of metal still embedded within the wound. Lexa doesn’t wince as Abby expertly removes the foreign objects within the wound; she doesn’t even deem it necessary to observe as sharp bloodied pieces of metal drop one by one onto the metal plate on the counter beside her. _Wow._

When the extraction is all done, Abby pulls away and it’s Clarke’s turn.

“So Lexa, if you’d like to sit up. Clarke will do the rest.” Abby nods glancing at her flashing pager, and she begins to retreat – her attentions being called elsewhere within the clinic.

Lexa sits up dutifully; barely wincing, barely even acknowledging a pain that would leave Clarke screaming in agony. What kind of person can take a bullet wound and act like it’s a goddamned papercut?

Clarke stretches the linen (the only form of bandages they had remaining in the stocks) over the wound after dabbing it with some alcohol. And, once again Lexa shows no sign of experiencing any form of sensation; is she a robot? A race of super-human? Clarke is almost certain that if their positions were swapped she’d be in tears – doctor or not, anticipation of pain or not. In the final moment of her deduction, a dawning made her respect the female lying before her more so … _What pain did she experience to present this degree of tolerance to such a wound?_

Once the whole process is completed and the blonde is mollified with her handiwork, she takes a single step backward. “All done.” She says softly, the words almost grating at the back of her throat from the disuse.

Lexa continues to sit, legs hanging off of the edge, a blank expression fixated to her face. Although it’s like she’s some sort of doll, or mannequin; it’s here that Clarke notices how _truly_ beautiful she really is. Though one would be rather blind to not acknowledge Lexa’s pulchritude. One of her more striking features was the sharp bridge of a pointed nose, shadowed eyes that appear to have the ability to bury itself into the darkest of souls and become luminous. And even further within that gaze, there’s something innately desperate struggling to break free through that stony barrier. Like little bubbles of air whirling in vortexes to the surface of a hurricane. Clarke feels a sudden chill, something forcing her hackles (if she were to have any) to rise.

You can tell a lot about one person through the look in their eyes. And Clarke can tell that Lexa’s not afraid of much, if at all. Is she even afraid to _die_?

Clarke finds that she’s ensnared in the woman’s gaze, like prey in the predator’s web. The bewildered doctor swallows, clears her throat noisily, and the magic seems to descend in a greater degree around them, dissipating into thin whorls of ashen grey.

"You can leave now.” Clarke says, but Lexa takes her hand in a vice-like grip, and pulls her closer. Blue eyes dilate as they pugnaciously collide into the salient olive that searches into her, as if there is _something_.

Lexa’s expression is dark, several glades of emotion that Clarke cannot comprehend at the moment but feels, too. But that that expression fixed to her delicately feline features is a delicious one, an intoxicating one that makes Clarke feel like she’s a specimen of exquisiteness, to be devoured and worshipped. Now, at the peak of their proximity, blonde is painfully aware that their lips are hovering the slightest distance from one another, she can almost taste Lexa’s mouth…

The breathing stills, the oxygen just about lingering in her lungs, yet she’s becoming rapidly starved of air. She vaguely remembers reading something about human nature. How when one is faced with a difficult decision, the brain automatically chooses the action that results in the most catastrophic events. Picture it: looking down upon a seventy storey skyscraper, the wind thrashes viciously across one’s face, pulling at the mind, at any who stand before it to the seductive slumber of eternal sleep. The brain, stricken with the anxiety of such a judgment chooses the most dramatic finale; the one where you end up bloodied, dispersed haphazardly across concrete tiles.

Now, her gaze drops to Lexa’s full-bodied lips, the subtle swell of a pout that exists as a separate entity of art altogether.

She hedges on allowing her brain to decide, because it’s telling her to **_kiss her!_** But she knows, logically, justly, that is not right. That she should not be kissing strangers let alone patients she’s met for a record thirty minutes or so. What could be said about her character if she did so?

Still, Clarke is so very confused, her mind is _almost_ overwhelmed by the assault on her senses. However, a couple of years functioning as a doctor, of having to test her will, allowed her to establish a barrier between emotion and logic. She breathes shakily, and her lips press into white lines – and attractive as hell or not, she’d never been the type to behave _that_ recklessly.

“Someone will take you to your room,” Clarke says finally pulling away, averting her eyes as she pretends to busy herself with the various tools laying astray over the metal surfaces. She’s still trying to recover from whatever that was, that _magnetic strength_ that drew her in, and deeper more so.  

Lexa nods, thanks her, and follows the male nurse away from the room. Once she’s left the room, Clarke breathes shakily and exhales heavily, settling back against the edge of the counter, slender fingers scraping against her scalp and grabbing handfuls of her own blonde locks.

“ _God_.”

~*~

“Did you see her? They say she’s the commander of the grounders.”

“What? You mean _that g-?_ ”

An otherwise half-asleep Clarke perks up at this, cobalt eyes peer over the newspaper she’s been pretending to read for the past half hour. She was once told it was advisable to _at least_ feign to like the presence of the other staff, but found it more exciting to sit rather than engage in their primordial natures – _gossiping_ , that is. A ‘ _g--?_ ’

“Yeah, but keep it quiet will you? But she’s Lexa … _kom trikru_.”

Their conversations drop to a whisper as Abby strolls into the room just in time to hear the latter of the sentences hanging like a storm in the air, she’s still dressed in flowing polyester white but there’s a gritty expression to match her foreboding demeanour. “Clarke.”

The blonde raises her eyes at her summoning, “Yeah?”

“Follow me.”

Clarke turns her eyes to the group of staff a short distance from her. She can easily see that they’re playing ignorance but would be ready to discuss the manner in which her mother had spoken to her as soon as she leaves; everything was of discussion in work environments, apparently. Everything to be deliberated and theorised, and, really, Clarke doesn’t want anything to do with it, not now and not ever.

When they’re out of earshot of the room, Abby pulls her to one side and scolds her, “Do not discuss patient information with the other staff.”

Clarke looks confused for a second and then shakes her head, brows merging into a faint note of disbelief. “I wasn’t---,”

“Eavesdropping is the same thing.” Abby interrupts in disproval. She doesn’t know why her mother is behaving in such an peculiar manner. She doesn’t know why her mother gets to talk to her like this, either. However, Clarke nods as she realises the steely resolve is threatening to burst from Abby’s typically soft brown eyes; this is one of those situations to which one should back down… for now.

She nods, and cocks her head while the gaze upon her expression clearly displays one of wariness. “I’m going.”

“Yeah.” Abby nods and is silent almost as if she were a teacher dismissing her student. “Oh, and Clarke? Leave Lexa to me, she is no longer in your care, but mine.”

Clarke is about to leave, however she catches that her mother isn’t quite as focussed. As if there is something on her mind. She takes a closer look, at her mother who’s static. And realises that Abby’s fixated on something. As Clarke looks toward the door her mother’s been staring at, a group of men and women dressed in formal attire exit the room. Before the door closes fully, Clarke identifies a sleeping individual within, a brunette with hair being braided by some submissive-looking girl… _Lexa?_

The dark-skinned woman of the group who’d just exited the room, catches Clarke’s curious gaze. There’s a moment of eye contact, and something like a diluted snarl pricks at the stranger’s mouth. Clarke notes that there’s something _off_ in those unnerving eyes, and something like fear instigates her heart to skip a few beats. What is up with these odd people and their serpentine gazes?

However nothing further occurs as the shrill pierce of the woman’s phone interrupts the thick tension in the air. Now engaged in conversation, the woman takes the rest of the group in the opposite direction of the corridor, save for two burly men with the heavily scarred faces. They station themselves by either sides of the door, surveying with resolute malevolence at the innocent staff passing by. From experience, this time, Clarke knows not to look and pretends she’s been in conversation with her mother instead of watching the strange debacle. Concurrently her mother gets the idea to physically extract her (again) from around the corner near to the hospital store cupboard.

Clarke finds it strange, that far-off agitated look that’s now evidently marred onto Abby’s face. It’s annoying, aggravating, makes her feel like a seven-year-old who still has to sit at the child’s table. “I know you’re hiding something, mom. _What do you know about Lexa?_ Why are you so afraid for me to talk to her _now?_ And who the hell were those guys?” Those questions erupt from her mouth in a cascade of queries, questions that had been on her tongue since that odd encounter earlier.

The doctor doesn’t know what happened since the short time that lapsed, and only knows one thing right now, she doesn’t like the feeling of naivety that comes with it.

“Don’t ask questions, Clarke.” Abby says with a cautioned stare, “Don’t probe into it. **_Don’t get involved_**.”

Those _don’t, don’t, don’ts._ Something prickles insistently against her skin, discomfort and something more. Something rotten and resentful, like decaying flowers. Clarke observes her mother in a single molarity of silence and regard. Her mind is still at present, all tranquil waters and floating clouds.

But, for some reason, _here_ is where Clarke’s tolerance depletes. Perhaps it’s because she’s exhausted, perhaps she’s just reached the peak of her patience – she’s an _adult_ now, her mother should treat her as such. Though Clarke would begrudgingly admit, it’s difficult to be an adult, really, when in the presence of someone who’s raised you from a baby to adulthood; it’s not her mother’s fault. Still, Clarke does not see that, and she sees condescension and the hovering of a parent who should mind her own business.

“What? Like dad? Like how you’ve never spoken a word about him after you guys argued that night? **_You_** made dad leave.” Clarke demands impertinently as she frees herself from Abby’s firm grip. Still, habit is habit, and the traits of adolescence surface every so often in the form of severe defensiveness. “I know how to take care of myself, _mom._ I haven’t needed your help in _years_.”

Abby is left staring semi-mournfully as Clarke powers away in sharp heel clicks and cutting eyes, fuelled by anger that’s still yet to be diffused, and seems like it would take an eternity (and a little more).

 

~*~

“… _Doctor!_ ”

Clarke’s springs up from her bed as she draws on a white coat over her shoulders; it’s her first night shift alone… ever. The facility is already frantic with activity but Clarke doesn’t have enough time to worry about the coordinated dissonance of a functioning hospital – she has a job to do. She runs through several corridors to the entrance as another bed is wheeled in.

One glance and Clarke is in action; it’s just like the practice times before, and the times she’d spent with her mother. It’s all muscle memory now; same old, same old.

“Her vitals?”

“Not good. Her heart rate has been high since extraction from the scene, there’s a huge knife wound in her chest and she’s exhaling blood… Should we wait for Doctor Griffin? I mean, your mom?”

“My mom?” Clarke pauses hesitatingly, she hadn’t the faintest idea where her mother was, nor how long it would take to find her. She’d had the backup of her mother many times before, this time she wouldn’t be here should she fuck everything up. _Well I’ll be fine without her._ “No, I can do this one.”

_I’m a doctor Griffin, too._

“Okay.” She breathes and tilts her head listening at the patient’s chest. As she stands up again, she stares Raven in the eye, commanding attention in that one moment. “Secure a patent airway, the patient’s lung is obstructed.”

Raven lifts the patient’s chin. As the head is hyperextended, Clarke hears the distinctive sound of sucking in the female’s laboured inhalation. She’s grateful it’s not something overtly complicated for her first night shift. “It’s an open pneumothorax, I need dressings for now. And Bellamy…prepare the surgery for a chest tube insertion.”

A little while later tube successfully inserted and patient relatively stable, Clarke hangs up her white coat and slumps horizontally across the three-seater in the spare patient room. She could have returned to the staff room, but, at the time, wasn’t too keen on the prospect of interacting with her mother after her abrupt scathing comments earlier.

“Fuck…” Clarke half-yawns while her vision adjusts to the dim lighting; and as she eyes the clock upon the wall, she suppresses an unprofessional groan. It’s just gone past three in the morning, and there was still a while to go, yet.

“That was impressive.”

Clarke sits up, eyeing the intruder through fogged up eyes. “Lexa?”

“Clarke.” Lexa greets, though she stays put by the door. “The injured patient with the knife wound, I saw…you have much skill.” 

“My mother is the true doctor; my skills have a lot to improve before I reach her level.”

“Still, you saved a life. This is an action that cannot be disregarded, Clarke.”

The blonde doesn’t have anything to say to that, merely nods and throws her head back. As she inhales softly, she speaks again, letting her eyelids slide over her dry eyes in a minor reprieve. “And you’re supposed to be resting, Lexa. Your wound is not fully healed. You shouldn’t be wandering around the hospital late at night.”

“I’ll be fine, Clarke. This is nothing.” Lexa replies easily; and when Clarke opens her eyes again, she sees that the spot, where the brunette had been standing, is empty.

_Weird girl._

_Weird… but too attractive for my sanity._

~*~

[ _A week or so later._ ]

“You can now be discharged,”

Clarke pauses as she rounds the corner to the corridor where Lexa’s room was; her mother had been taking care of Lexa as she’d claimed, whilst Clarke carried on with her other duties at the facility. Honestly, Clarke didn’t see the point of initiating more conflict just for the sake of it; and though her curiosity had been piqued, there hadn’t been very much more happening at the hospital regarding this Lexa girl (to her knowledge, anyway). This discharging, however, is the first she hears of it; and not something she entirely approves of. Especially if it’s due to her mother’s clouded decisions. Therefore it is not ridiculous for Clarke’s interest (if it could be called as such) to be stoked as upon recognition of that statement being declared in her mother’s voice, she retreats a few steps but remains close enough to listen to the conversation.

“You’re more than capable of walking and going about your daily duties.”

“No, the commander is not --,” A male voice interrupts.

“ ** _Gustus_**.” Clarke hears the authority in Lexa’s voice, and compares it to the soft-spoken woman she’d interacted with in the few occasions over the past week.

“Sorry, commander.” 

“Your presence has caused enough trouble, Lexa.”

 _Trouble?_ Clarke, perplexed, racks her brain for the ‘trouble’ her mother implied.

“You must leave.”

“You dare speak to the commander with such insolence!?” A woman’s voice snarled, it’s full of commination, something that Clarke has never experienced before.

“Indra, _silence_. If the either of you have anything more to say, I will personally punish you. This applies to the rest of you too, each and any who dare to question my decisions. _You know what will happen_.” Lexa barks at them, and the growing discord immediately settles into pure submissive silence.

_To command **that kind of** a crowd with such ease… she must be someone important. _

“I will leave by noon,” Clarke hears Lexa say, until a scream reverberates along the corridor in the opposite direction of where she is. The piercing scream dissipates as a series of rapid-gunshots slam down like thunder into the hospital’s chemical air.

Clarke’s eyes widens as Lexa, and her group, and her mother exit the room running toward the direction of the noise… which happens to be in the same direction that Clarke had been hiding in.

_Shit!_

As they pass her, Abby eyes her suspiciously, but with their instincts all kicked into overdrive at the noise, there’s little she can say.

“That way, commander.” The dark-skinned woman says in a hushed voice, pointing just over the reception counter, at the deranged man brandishing a samurai sword. At his feet lay a presumably ammunition-less pauza P50, discarded, emptied shells scattered over the previously pristine floor.

To the left a small fire burned, whilst adjacent, the windows save for the one by the bathroom were shattered and in dangerous shards. The silver blade he wields is stained with drops of fresh vermillion, the corpse not visible from Clarke’s perspective, though she sees that his eyes are awash with mania.

“Where is this famed _commander?_ ” He calls out tauntingly, as he shakes his sword through the air again. The receptionists Clarke can’t recall the name of, still cowering beneath their respective desks. “I’m gonna kill you!” He cackles noisily, while Clarke shivers at the atrocity that he is.

“Let me.” The dark skinned woman demands, expression set in one of resolution; she’s ready to kill and she’s killed many times before now. Clarke realises that her earlier instincts, the ones telling her to _run_ were not unfounded.

“No, leave him.” Lexa draws out a throwing knife, jet back and minimalistic, from the thigh strap at her right leg. “This one is mine.”

She swiftly stands up grasping the knife by the blade, the man yells in alarm as he spots her and draws his arm back to throw his sword; but Lexa is quicker, dodging the rotating heavy blade with one small sidestep. Her counter came with formidable accuracy, the flick of her wrist sent the little black knife pivoting silently through the air, and jamming dead-centre into his forehead. He collapses to the ground with a dull thump, just as she calls out calmly, “Do not fear. It’s safe.”

Clarke releases the shaky breath held within the fibres of her lungs, her hands are cold, freezing. They’d been shaking in the duration of the attack, but now they are beginning to regain colour, somewhat.

But, it was the unexpected quickness of it all. Killing someone, _this kind of environment_ is something totally deviant of role as a medical specialist. Furthermore, to Clarke’s outrage, killing should not even occur in a goddamned hospital.

They’d inadvertently taken lives, watched the life fade out of people before. But to intentionally execute a living being with such ease…

 _Just who the fuck are you?_ She thinks as she silently forces a glare at the Lexa calmly discussing something with the group of her men and women a further distance away. It’s like she has it all, the looks, the power and the doting family. Were they family? Or what?

And why was there a random man who’d turned up at the hospital’s doorsteps screaming bloody murder?

Clarke has so many questions hanging on the edge of tongue yet she’s sure – no, more than sure -- that it’s a bad idea to ask. Better to not be involved with these type of people. _Maybe_ there was an inkling of truth in her mother’s warnings.

“Don’t. Clarke.”

Clarke turns to face Abby, irritation bubbling beneath her calm demeanour, but that fury falls away when she realises her mother looks more petrified than anything else. However, for Clarke, though, the fear of the moment before falls away and the familiar bitterness, the acerbity surges underneath her skin again.

“ _Don’t_.”

She doesn’t quite comprehend the ‘don’t’ but she presumes it’s something to do with Lexa. “I’m not incapable, mom.” Clarke adolescently chides her mother with the identical resentment that no longer needed to be supressed – the truth was out, after all. “I’m not going to interfere with things that risk my life.” Though there’s a part of her that wants to defy her mother, as if she were a child again, she almost feels the desire to ask Lexa for details.

Abby is silenced once again, and Clarke almost feels sorry for the sorrow that resonates in the eyes that had gazed upon her so affectionately from her earliest memory. She shakes off the anger for the moment, and begins to leave, ordering the receptionist to call the police regarding the assault. It’s almost natural for her to take charge.

By the receptionists, Clarke is standing close enough to Lexa and her group to hear an, “Are you okay, commander?”

Acting upon instinct, she turns at the voice, the mode to repair, to heal prompting her doctor-like curiosity to look. However Lexa is still fine (she appears) and she ends up gazing instead of scowling, admiring the brunette’s slender form instead of hating it for allowing her to kill so easily. As her eyes slowly drift up, she just about detects Lexa’s questioning gaze and the dark smirk on her mouth.

Lexa had caught her looking at her.

_Lexa had caught her full-on drooling over her._

Clarke shivers at the invisible contact, unsure if it’s an action born of witnessing the woman’s deathly ability, if it was due to that devilish smile … or if it was just all to do with that little something that had almost happened during their first meeting.

Before Clarke can stop herself she feels herself sinking back into the memory of Lexa’s earthy scent, the almost-taste of her lips, the exchanging of breaths… Agitatedly, she shakes her head as if to dismiss the thoughts, growling softly to herself while she stalks away. She couldn’t do _this,_ not right now.


End file.
